VERDICT IN BLOOD by Gail Bowen - BOOK - ADVANCE READING COPY

Verdict in Blood is Gail Bowens sixth novel featuring Joanne Kilbourn, one of Canadas most beloved sleuths. Teacher, friend, lover, single mother, and now grandmother, Joanne has a quick intelligence and a boundless compassion, which repeatedly get her into and out of trouble. In Verdict in Blood, Joannes good friend Hilda McCourt is visiting her in Regina, Saskatchewan, when Judge Justine Blackwells corpse is found sprawled across one of the limestone slabs of the Boy Scout memorial in Wascana Park. Blackwell, known for the harsh sentences shes handed down over the years, had lately been seeking out people shed once incarcerated and trying to help them. Had she had a genuine change of heart, or had she been getting senile? Even the fearsome judge herself had wondered. Just the night before her death, shed asked Hilda to make an assessment of her mental condition. Now shes dead, the matter is urgent: Which of her two wills should prevail the one leaving everything to her daughters, including the famous sixties singer Lucy Blackwell, or the one leaving it all to Culhane House, a halfway house for ex-cons? Whoever stood to lose could be her murderer, and Hilda has to decide. Before too long, Joanne (who has problems enough of her own with her lover, Alex, and his troubled nephew, Eli) finds herself once again embroiled in intrigue.